Month: January 2018

“C” was for crosswords in my Instagram Alphabet, though I just as easily could have said Christmas or Charleston or cooking (for starters). Sometimes it was hard to decide!

At first I thought of this is as one of those posts that goes all over, because I had a handful of ideas to share. However, as I was writing I realized they tied together somewhat logically. Read on and you can decide for yourself.

Thanks to all of you who followed my Instagram project, #alphabet2018. (I wrote about it here.) I made it through the alphabet without skipping a day! My posts went from A is for artwork thru Z for zinnia with twenty-four posts in between.

This was fun to envision and fun to finish, and it forced me to think more creatively about my time on Instagram, rather than just scrolling thru (something I do a lot). I think I’ll be approaching at least some of my IG posts more purposefully in the future. And, who knows, perhaps I’ll come up with another challenge.

Maybe not traditional “coffee table books” but certainly something to spark a conversation.

Speaking of Instagram, a number of followers there liked my IG image of Personal History by Katherine Graham and A Good Life by Ben Bradlee. I dug out both books after seeing “The Post,” first because I wanted to re-read what they had written about the Pentagon Papers (and yes their stories mesh with the screenplay), and, second, because the movie and the concept of journalistic freedom are suddenly so very timely.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I hope you do. If you have, I hope you’ll tell me what you thought. Most of the people we know absolutely loved it. The story is worth telling and re-telling. Frankly, I remember Watergate much better than I do the Pentagon Papers (which is probably a function of where I was in my life at the time). Looking back, the Pentagon Papers was a fairly a-political event. The Nixon White House was furious and tried to stop publication, but both republicans and democrats had been signing off on the silence for decades. That’s the point.

Beyond the story, however, is how well Spielberg captured the sixties. There were so many subtle nods to the time: the women were the secretaries; the men were the reporters and editors. Katherine Graham was an anomaly, a Washington hostess who also ran what was becoming an increasingly powerful newspaper. She came before so many others. I found it hard to ignore those subtle messages.

Which is the perfect lead-in for the Women’s March

Heading down Michigan Avenue to the March. This doesn’t show the crowd, which was much more than expected.

My daughter and I attended the Women’s March in Chicago a few weeks ago. We’re so glad we did! The diverse marchers included little girls and boys as well as great grandmas and grandpas and every age in between. I think that’s one of the key messages of the march. We’re all in this together and we all benefit from the larger message.

Some signs (and marchers) were more strident than others, but I think that’s just the nature of the beast. The freedom to speak out is what makes our democracy special. What a message to participants and bystanders, including those around the world.

There is an inherent sense of camaraderie about events like this. I took the train downtown from my conservative suburb, and the crowd at the station was just a clue of what was to come. There were easily 150 to 200 marchers who boarded at my commuter stop, and the next three stops were the same story. (In fact the train, which already had extra cars, was so full that it skipped the last five stops on its way to Chicago. Another train picked up the riders at those stops.) Although I met a number of friends at my stop, we were all soon friends with everyone in our car.

We loved seeing young girls like this taking part in the March and applauded their parents for giving them a great civics lesson.

Once downtown I caught up with my daughter and another friend and we made our way, with a growing crowd, to the march’s overflowing start point. After a lot of walking and standing, and a few blocks with the march itself, Mag & I broke off for lunch. We were able to reflect on what we had seen and agreed that we loved seeing so many kids at the march, including some elementary school girls enthusiastically leading chants and cheers. They march and we march because others marched before us.

At times like this I think of the suffragettes who marched — and worked — long and hard and at great personal risk to win the vote for women. My grandmother did not have the right to vote until she was well into her twenties. But once she had that right, she never failed to “exercise her franchise” by voting at every opportunity. In fact, one of the last times she voted (in her eighties), she refused to go with my grandfather because they disagreed on the candidates. She went instead with a like-minded lady friend.

I was standing in line at the local post office the other day. Lines there are the norm; its not unusual for them to be 10 or 12 people deep while two postal clerks methodically work their way along, often disappearing into the bowels of the post office for inexplicable periods of time. And the people waiting in line are understandably a disgruntled group, sighing and shuffling and checking their phones, trying to get what should be a simple errand behind them.

As one more customer was called to the counter and the line inched forward, the woman in front of me insisted we trade places and I step up in the line. (Yikes, I thought, was I sighing that loud?) Then she went on to say she was trying to do one good deed, one nice thing, everyday, and this would be it for that day. She said she had started her plan on the day after Christmas and so far had not missed a day.

This, of course, piqued my curiosity.

I asked what kinds of things she had done, and she said some had been really simple, like changing places with me in line. Others were easy, but took a little more time, like driving an acquaintance to a doctor’s appointment. Some had cost a few dollars. She and her husband were traveling over the holidays and when they stopped for gas and some snacks, she gave the clerk a $20 bill, wished her a happy holiday, and told her to keep the change.

Her goal is for others to just pass “one nice thing” along.

Paying it forward is not a new concept. We’ve all heard tales of Starbucks drive-thru customers paying for the coffee in the car behind them, then that driver does the same for the next car in line. And so it goes. It’s a nice story, but even nicer when it moves beyond the line for lattes.

Coincidentally, about a week before my Post Office visit, I ran into the grocery store on my way to a meeting. I grabbed two quick items and made my way to the express lane. (This is so rare for me. Even if I think I’m just getting a few things, I fill a cart and never qualify for the express line.) The woman at the front of the line was going thru her wallet for the second or third time, obviously short of cash. As she got more and more flustered, the man in line behind her passed his credit card to the clerk and said, quietly, just add those items to mine. And without missing a beat, the clerk did just that.

Problem solved.

We all moved on. And my faith in the kindness of strangers was affirmed.

I’ve been thinking about the woman in the Post Office doing one nice thing every day. She made it her goal to do that this year. And then there’s the man in the grocery store; did he do what hopefully any of us would or is he on a mission, too?

What if we all tried to do that? Then I thought maybe a movement is afoot and I’m just learning about it. (I can be pretty dense.) It doesn’t cost much to be nice or to pay it forward. I was contemplating this post (and writing it in my head because that’s often how these things start) and decided that before I went any further, I’d Google this concept. Wow! There are books, lists, posters, calendars, meditations, and, of course, the Boy Scout slogan, “Do a good turn daily.” In Chicago there is an organization, https://onegooddeedchicago.org.

Good deeds from the heart not the calendar

These are all good things, but not what I had in mind. I’m not thinking about something so organized, but something more organic. I’m thinking we all need to be just a little nicer, and hope it rubs off on others. I’m not promising to do one good thing every day and I’m certainly not going to write them on a calendar, but I am going to try to be more aware of opportunities to act more positively and then do it.

So, if a short, chubby lady from Chicago gives you her place in line, it might be me!

The magic of Rome is that you can just round a corner and see the Coliseum or St. Peter’s or some other iconic image. I’m always amazed to fins myself in a situation like that.

Last fall as I was telling the multi-part story of our trip to Italy, life and “the holidays” got in the way, so here is my post about returning to Rome. I hope you enjoy it! (You can read about our earlier stops in Tuscany here and Florence here.)

Rome was our last stop in Italy. As with Florence, it was not our first visit. Last year we toured the Vatican Museums, the Borghese Gallery, and the Forum. It was fun going back with some of the tourist pressure off.

We took the highspeed train from Florence to Rome and checked into the Residenza di Ripetta, where we stayed last year. We love this hotel; it’s elegant yet comfortable and ideally situated between Rome’s Piazza di Popolo and the Spanish Steps. It’s just a few short blocks from the Via Corso, perfect for enjoying the daily passeggiata before stopping for dinner in one of the small, local restaurants in the neighborhood.

Checking off another Papal Basilica

There are four Papal major basilicas in Rome: St. Peter’s in the Vatican; St. John Lateran, which predates St. Peter’s and which we visited last year; St. Paul Outside the Walls; and the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. We had seen St. Peter’s and St. John Lateran, so we decided to visit at least one more and Santa Maria Maggiore looked like it was within walking distance of our hotel.

In reality, the church was really only kind of in “walking distance.”

Rome is built on seven hills. What I have been trying to figure out, for two visits now, is why no matter where we are in Rome, we are always walking uphill. AND, if you are going downhill, you are probably navigating ancient, steep, stone stairs. It’s a puzzle.

We came upon Santa Maria di Maggiore from behind and there was no signage. We weren’t even sure we were in the right place. Then we walked around to the front and found the entrance and the requisite security screening.

Santa Maria Maggiore was built in the fifth century and served as the temporary Palace of the Popes after the the Avignon Papacy. Knowing this history I expected it to occupy a distinguished setting, but actually it just appears in an old Roman neighborhood, surrounded by cobblestones that set it apart from the surrounding street. Because Santa Maria Maggiore is a papal basilica, it is used by the Pope, especially on certain holy days.

Michelangelo’s Moses, intended to be part of a larger monument to Pope Julius II, remains in this basilica as part of the Pope’s tomb.

From here we walked (mostly uphill and then up a remarkable set of stairs) to Saint Peter in Chains (San Pietro in Vincoli), built in the fifth century to house the relic of chains believed to have bound Saint Peter when he was imprisoned in Jerusalem. This minor basilica is home to Michelangelo’s statue of Moses, a massive work.

Taking a museum break

Rome is a lot more than churches.

Capitoline Museums on Capitoline Hill (another hill!) house an amazing assortment of secular art and artifacts that reflect Rome’s history. Once two palaces facing a piazza, the site was redesigned by Michelangelo in 1536. We loved seeing this side of Rome, especially after our previous “day of churches.” But for me, the real star of the day was the view of the Forum and other ruins from Capitoline Hill as we walked out of the buildings.

Looking down on the Forum from the top of Capitoline Hill. We toured the Forum last year, but seeing it from above made me appreciate the extent and sophistication of the ancient site even more. It’s much more extensive than our tour. Perhaps a reason to go back.These ruins across from the Capitoline Museums, including the Forum of Augustus and Trajan’s Market and Trajan’s Forum, are currently fenced off but appear to be even more sophisticated in design.

The Vatican’s Mosaic Workshop

On our last day in Rome we went to the Vatican for a tour of St. Peter’s and the mosaic studios. (And you thought we were done with churches!) We had toured the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel, ending with St. Peter’s, last year. But that tour happened to fall on a national holiday and coincided with a special Papal audience. We were shoulder-to-shoulder with other visitors the entire time.

This year we were hoping for a better experience and, boy, did we get it.

Steve found a tour that included the Vatican Mosaic Studio online with Viator. We joined just one other couple and our very knowlegeable guide early that morning. Contrary to the tour’s description, the guide started our tour in the Mosaic Studio so we would better appreciate the art we would see in the basilica. He knew what he was doing; the studio director took over and led the four of us into what I can only describe as a true atelier or studio, this one devoted to the preservation of the precious (and priceless) Vatican mosaics as well as the creation of newly commissioned pieces.

The studio is discretely located in one of the buildings in the Vatican complex. We began in a room that for all practical purposes was part conference room with a center table for display and part gallery, with a variety of mosaic pieces arrayed around the periphery. Sadly, photos were not allowed. The pieces are ancient and modern, sacred and secular. I assumed that the studio’s purpose was to maintain and/or repair the hundreds of square meters of mosaics in the Vatican. While this is true, the studio also produces new works that the Pope often presents as gifts to distinguished visitors and accepts private commissions from around the world. For example, once we stepped beyond this small gallery into the actual workspace, we saw one artist working on mosaic reproduction of a Monet painting.

In order to perfectly repair the Vatican mosaics the space also accommodates a mosaic library of the stones and colors used in all its artworks. These archives are stunning in both their simplicity and their extent. We were also allowed into another work space housing a small kiln where artists can fire the exact color necessary to complete a new work. There is no part of the mosaic process that is not painstakingly created and/or cared for. And of course, care is evident in every piece the studio creates. I’m not an artist, but I do like to understand the process behind art and this was a remarkable lesson.

The guide was, of course, so right to show us the studio first, because when he took us into St. Peter’s the stunning mosaic art there came alive. St. Peter’s Basilica is Christendom’s largest church; its size and decoration are breath-taking and, as our guide pointed out to us, purposely so. It would be impossible for even a “casual believer” to not be moved by St. Peter’s.

Michelangelo’s Pieta. It leaves me speechless.

One of the options on this tour was a climb to the top of St. Peter’s Dome. I’m sure the view is stunning, but that’s not my kind of climb (or Steve’s either). So, the other couple left with another guide for that tour and we had a private tour of St. Peter’s. One of life’s better travel surprises.

Sure there were hundreds of others in the the basilica (in fact a group of seminarians was being ordained at the very front), but it felt like it was just us and our guide. Our guide walked us through several pieces, explaining the meaning and symbolism in each mosaic. We also visited the crypt to see where previous popes are buried. I must admit that although we are not catholic, it was amazing to see names recent and historic on tomb after tomb. (Many of the earliest tombs were destroyed long ago.)

We both think our guide made all of this come alive for us. He was more than just knowledgeable, perhaps trained for a religious vocation in an earlier career? As we were leaving St. Peter’s he pointed out one final mosaic in the portico which purports to tell visitors there is more work to do for God as they leave the physical confines of St. Peter’s.

One of the mosaics as visitors leaves St. Peter’s, illustrating the work to be done beyond the basilica on behalf of the church.

We took this tour on our last day in Rome (our last day in Italy in fact), and we were overwhelmed with all we had seen. We stopped for a coffee then walked through some markets and found our way to Piazza Navona where we had a late lunch, before winding our way to the Spanish Steps and eventually back to our hotel. Here are some photos from that day.

Near the Vatican, Castel Sant’Angelo was initially built as a tomb for the emperor. Since no one could be buried within the city walls, Emperor Hadrian used this commanding space just outside the walls. Later it was used as a prison and as a last refuge in times of danger.

The Four Rivers Fountain in the center of Piazza Navona by Bernini demonstrates the four corners of the world using four river gods gathered around an Egyptian obelisk, a symbol especially favored by the Romans. This square, really an oval that was once athletic grounds, has played a role in Roman life since ancient times.

After three weeks in Italy, we were ready to head for home. But now, three months later, I could easily go back. It seems as if there are always new layers of Italy to peel back and examine, new museums, churches, vineyards and towns. I’m not tired of it yet!

In the spirit of New Years resolutions, but with a limited commitment, I’ve embarked on an Instagram project I came up with to 1) challenge myself in the New Year and 2) promote more IG activity (you can follow me here). My goal is to post a photo daily that corresponds to a letter of the alphabet, as in A is for artwork, B is for books, C is for crosswords, and so on.

This is not going to save the planet or change the course of history. I just want to see if I can do it and what photos I’ll come up with. And it has been a lot of fun. Here are a few of the photos I’ve posted so far:

Here you have A for artwork, B for books and D for dinner (with friends).

After I had decided on my alphabet challenge, Sue Grafton died. I’ve been a loyal reader of her alphabet mysteries (beginning with A is for Alibi published in 1982) since I discovered them, although I think I may have missed a few in the middle. In fact I just finished Y is for Yesterday a few months ago. Sadly, it is her latest and her last. Sue Grafton’s final illness kept her from work on the last book in the series. (As I understand it, per her request, another writer will not take over the last book, which would have been Z is for Zero.)

Her heroine, Kinsey Millhone, is a twice-divorced private detective in California. Grafton introduced her this way: “My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I’m thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids. The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind.”

How can you not keep reading after that?

An orphan raised by her no-nonsense aunt, Kinsey is frugal, fiercely independent, prefers peanut butter and pickle sandwiches to more laborious kitchen exploits, and is famously street smart. Millhone lives alone and works alone, but Grafton developed a colorful cast of friends, neighbors and associates to fill out her world, and they followed along — with evolving roles and personalities courtesy of Grafton — from book to book

I used to seek out her books when I needed a break from other, perhaps more serious reading. They had a formula, but I loved it. I like Kinsey and I admire her integrity. Now I feel as though I’ve lost a friend.

I still love “The Crown.”

Like so many people, I ended the holiday season with a cold and for a few days really just wanted to languish under a quilt on the couch. And while I was “languishing,” I started re-watching season 2 of “The Crown” on Netflix. I was so excited to see it when it was initially released I just pretty much whizzed through it, so it was fun to go back and really pay attention.

I fell in love with the first season last year, and the second season is just as delightful. (In fact, it’s turning me into a bit of a royal junkie!) Yes, it stretches the truth, twists history in some places, and I wonder what the Windsors really think of it. But I love the quality of the production, the Queen’s fierce determination to do right by her job, the way she handles those pesky prime ministers, the brush with history. Not to mention that Prince Philip is a bit of a handful and Princess Margaret — well, what can one say, right?

The scenery is stunning, and it seems no expense was spared. If you want to know more about how the production team recreated Buckingham, Windsor and Balmoral, Joni Webb of Cote de Texas did a fabulous job of researching the actual houses and even furniture they did use here.

And if you are also a royal junkie, please note that the second season of “Victoria” starts next week!

Belated New Years wishes to you and yours. I sincerely hope 2018 is a happy, healthy year, filled with wonder and laughter and exceeds your expectations!